Our Guide to Writing a Better Article

We know that many of our readers blog daily, and for some of you it’s what you do for a living. Although many of you have great ideas, sometimes you can’t write them down the way you want to, or the article ends up becoming a disorganized mess and you think that you need to start from scratch. However, we’re here to help those of you that may be struggling to put you’re big and important idea into an organized post. By the end of this article, we hope you’ll be able to write long and informative pieces without having to worry about the simple and annoying struggles you may currently face.

Always write down your thoughts – When someone comes up with an idea, they typically try to remember what it is mentally and never write it down unless it’s something they can find again later on, which I do myself sometimes. If you have a good idea, get to a computer or write it down on paper and save it, even though you may not have fully thought it out. Saving your ideas is important when writing because you should always have a lot of topics and content to choose from, and you can simply cross out or delete ideas that don’t sound as great the second time you read them.

Referencing your paper and read other articles that are similar to your topic – When writing about a major news event or breaking story, it is important that you carefully read reports and other information about the topic. This will help you write more and cite a lot of important facts and key points that other bloggers may have missed or forgotten. If another blog manages to post an article about the same topic before you, take a moment to read what they have. You may end up realizing you left something out of your article or they missed a key point that will help make your article better than theirs.

Using the Six Traits of Writing – Although this may make your work seem like an English or Language Arts paper, using these traits will help you write a better article, whether you know it or not. The six traits of writing are: Ideas & Content, Voice, Sentence Fluency, Word Choice, Organization, and Conventions. These are the six key points to everything you’ll write, and it’s important to check your paper over and over to make sure it flows well and is truly a good piece of writing. I always read my posts twice to make sure I didn’t misspell a word or Microsoft Word didn’t change a word to something else by mistake. Also, send your paper to trusted friends or an adult and have them critique your work, because sometimes it takes another pair of eyes to catch our mistakes.

Try to be unique, not just mainstream – If you’re a professional blogger, you know that writing about mainstream news and information is important if you want to compete with larger sites, but it’s also important to include a fair share of unique content that’ll make you stand out from the crowd. Those that blog for fun always share their own ideas, stories and tips, so it’s actually a good idea to learn from some of the smaller bloggers, because even though they don’t have a large audience, you could take a skill they have and apply it to your professional blog.

If you aren’t enjoying what you’re writing, what’s the point? – All bloggers should enjoy what they are working on, because the purpose of maintaining and writing a series of blogs and articles is to have fun and take a break from other activities that may not peak your interests. There are times when some professional bloggers write about things that aren’t necessarily interesting to them, but it is important to enjoy your line of work most of the time. If you’re constantly bored while writing a blog, then perhaps this kind of hobby just isn’t for you.

Include opinions, not just facts – Unless you’re writing about a national or world news event, you should typically include your thoughts and opinions. You should be willing to see why others may disagree with your opinion, not just write in a biased format and never let your readers share their thoughts. However, articles should be based mostly on fact with less opinion, but some topics may call for mostly opinion and smaller amounts of facts.

Presenting your article to the public – After you have put your piece together, you must now decide how you want to organize your article, whether or not you want to use images, etc. Blogs should use some HTML and images when necessary, but try to post professionally unless you’re writing about things that are based on decoration and home improvement. Still, nearly every article could use a little extra design, so if you avoid overdoing it with colors and graphics, you should be fine.

Although many of you apply these tips to the articles you regularly post, it’s still important to analyze your previous articles and improve upon them in any way you can. I don’t think it’s possible for any blog to be completely perfect and polished, but there’s definitely room for improvement most of the time